1 “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’ 2 The Lord God has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks. 3 And you shall go out through the breaches, each one straight ahead; and you shall be cast out into Harmon,” declares the Lord. 4 “Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days; 5 offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim freewill offerings, publish them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel!” declares the Lord God. 6 “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord. 7 “I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither; 8 so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord. 9 “I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord. 10 “I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord. 11 “I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord. 12 “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” 13 For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!
There is a scene in Thomas Shadwell’s 1675 play, “The Libertine,” in which the wicked character of Don Juan (called Don John in the play), stands on the brink of hell, sees the agony and torment into which he is about to be pulled, and yet still stands utterly defiant and unrepentant. He says this about the horrors of hell presented before him:
These things I see with wonder, but no fear.
Were all the Elements to be confounded,
And shuffled all into their former Chaos;
Were Seas of Sulphur flaming round about me,
And all Mankind roaring within those fires,
I could not fear or feel the least remorse.
To the last instant I would dare thy power.
Here I stand firm, and all thy threats [condemn];
Thy Murderer stands here, now do thy worst.[1]
The audience is supposed to be shocked by Don Juan’s defiance and stubbornness, and, indeed, it is shocking! Yet, if we are honest, have we not seen this kind of defiance even in our own hearts? Do we not know what it is to defy the disciplining hand of God, to refuse to tremble before Him? Do we not know what it is to choose our sin over His grace, maybe not so eloquently as Don Juan does here, but just as defiantly?
The audience should feel the same shock at Amos 4 for here too we see defiance and stubbornness and a refusal to repent.
God sees the reality of our hearts.
The first five verses of Amos 4 represent a recapping of the sins of Israel, albeit with a degree of nuance, followed by a sarcastic appeal for the people to go to their altars and worship. First, the focus of God’s wrath sharpens to one group of people within Israel.
1 “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’
Who are these cows of Bashan? We have reason to think that God is narrowing His focus here specifically to the hard-hearted and cruel aristocratic women of Israel. Tchavdar S. Hadjiev explains:
Since both the noun cows and the following Hebrew participles oppress, crush and say are feminine plural, scholars are generally agreed that Amos here addresses the aristocratic women of Samaria. The bovine metaphor should not be read through modern spectacles and seen as an insult. Just like the comparison of the beloved to a “mare” in Song of Solomon 1:9, it is intended, at least initially, to be seen in a positive light…The suckling cow is a widespread motif in Ancient Near Eastern iconography, associated with blessing and prosperity. The region of Bashan was renowned for its fertility, its bulls were especially strong and frightening (Ps. 22:12) and its cows well fed. The phrase is an apt image for the rich and powerful women of Israel’s capital, living in luxury and ease.[2]
This is helpful. These aristocratic women were particularly pernicious in their disdain for the lowly and the poor. They had become like the well-fed cows of the region, opulent and lavish in their excesses and self-importance. Their end, however, would not go well for them, as we see in verse 2.
2 The Lord God has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks.
Robert Alter points out that the Hebrew words for “baskets” and “fishhooks” “both…occur only here” and that “[s]ome scholars think both are terms for baskets used by fisherman; others think both are kinds of hooks.”[3] Regardless, it is not a hopeful picture. These aristocratic, cruel women will be taken away in a most unpleasant manner, either by hook or basket. All of them. This is the coming judgment.
3 And you shall go out through the breaches, each one straight ahead; and you shall be cast out into Harmon,” declares the Lord. 4 “Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days; 5 offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim freewill offerings, publish them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel!” declares the Lord God.
This call for sacrifices and tithes may sound surprising, but I am inclined to agree with H.A. Ironside’s assessment that verses 4 and 5 are an example of “solemn irony, after the manner of Elijah’s taunts to the priests of Baal” and that “[t]he whole passage is a sad commentary on the pitifully low state of Israel, whose whole system of worship was but iniquity and transgression, while yet they prided themselves on their pomp and ritual.”[4]
Indeed. This is why they are told to “transgress” and to “multiply transgression.” Their sham religious ceremonies would do precisely this: transgress! In playing out this religious charade, the reality of their hearts would condemn them.
Herein is established a powerful principle: God sees the reality of our hearts beneath the show of our religion. If your worship is a game and a hypocrisy, then your worship will condemn you. The reality of your heart and of your true intentions will rise up and accuse you before God. Do not think that the truth of why you are here is hidden from God.
Have you come to worship?
Have you come to pray?
Have you come to praise?
Does the reality of your heart render what you are doing here a lie, a hypocrisy, a charade?
Search your hearts. Better yet, ask God to search your hearts and reveal to you the reality of why you are here!
God disciplines us to drive us back to Him.
Then we move to a truly heart-rending series of verses in which God seems almost to marvel that Israel, despite His many acts of discipline, still refuses to return to Him. Watch:
6 “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.
“Cleanness of teeth” refers here to “absence of food.” This is not a pleasant thing. They have not been to the dentist in this verse. Rather, they are starving. This is a hard thing: their teeth are “clean” of food because God is not giving them any. This is one form of discipline. They cannot get full!
7 “I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither; 8 so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord. 9 “I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord. 10 “I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord. 11 “I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.
Notice the punishments:
- God took away their food.
- God took away their rain.
- God sent blight and mildew upon their gardens and vineyards.
- God sent locusts upon their fig trees and olive trees.
- God sent pestilence like those sent upon Egypt.
- God killed their young men with the sword.
- God took their horses.
- God overthrew “some” of them like He did Sodom and Gomorrah.
And their response? Throughout this amazing catalogue of discipline, we find the following refrain repeated five times:
6 …“yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.
8 …“yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.
9 …“yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.
10 …“yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.
11 …“yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.
Amazingly, pitifully, tragically: Israel continued to refuse to return to God.
Let me ask you a question: Is it even possible for God to get your attention anymore? What would God have to take from you for you to stop and say, “Ok, God. I will quit running. Ok, God. I will lay down my arms. Ok, God. I am ready now to listen.”? How must He smite you to get you to stop going down that path of destruction, to stop taking up that thing that is killing you, to stop doing that thing or thinking those thoughts that are tearing you apart?
…“yet you did not return to me,” declares the Lord.
Why will you not return to Him?
Sooner or later, you will stand before the Lord: Repent now!
Given the astonishing stubbornness of Israel, God offers yet one more act of discipline. This is the most jarring of all: the threat of His own self.
12 “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” 13 For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!
God will move directly against His rebellious people if they will not come back to Him. He will meet them with His mighty hand and smite them until they return. Whatever specifically this looks like, it is presented as a step up from the earlier acts of discipline. This is a daunting thought!
“Prepare to meet your God!”
Church, the thought of our God meeting us should be a great joy and delight. We pray for the return of King Jesus! Yet if we are rebelling against our God, His meeting us in discipline will not be a welcome reality. He disciplines those He loves and He will meet us however He must to have us.
The church ought to shudder at these words: “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” For what of our decadent and worldly and compromised church again? What of our hearts?
H.A. Ironside was correct when he suggested that the church has more reason to tremble before the disciplining hand of our great God than even Israel did. He writes:
Does not He who gazes down upon the pretentiousness of a guiltier Christendom regard it with even greater abhorrence? Where conscience is active it will surely lead to departure from iniquity of so glaring a character.[5]
Make no mistake: The God who sent His Son to lay down His life to purchase us will never abandon us, but, if He must, He will present Himself in disciplining fire to get us to come back. And when He does, it is a deep tragedy indeed if we refuse to relent and return.
Jesus, in Matthew 23, cries out over Jerusalem:
37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
But does He not cry out similarly to His own church? Not with the threat of damnation but with the threat of terrifying discipline? Does He not plead for us to come back under His wings of love? Surely He does. And this is the point of Amos: God loves us enough to drive us back to Himself. He will not give up on us. He will pursue us. He is a jealous God. He will not share His people. He will not leave you in your sin! We must come back to our God!
In 1890, a young poet at the end of his rope published the poem that would become the fame of his brief, troubled life (he died at age 47 of tuberculosis). He was poor, had a nervous breakdown, became addicted to opium, sold matches on the street to stay alive, slept by the river Thames, and was befriended by a prostitute who had pity on him and tried to help him. At the end of his rope, Francis Thompson dared to submit some of his writings and, when they appeared to the public, the hearts of many were touched. The most famous poem was “The Hound of Heaven,” a poem that dares to depict God as a great hound chasing him and never letting up. I would like for you to hear simply the beginning of that poem:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’[6]
The poem ends with the poet turning to the God who was pursuing him, as indeed Francis Thompson did. But that line—“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”—what a line! And it is true: If a person or a thing betrays God it likewise betrays you. Your sin is not your friend. Your sin is betraying you and keeping you from the source of all life. Yet, near the end of the poem, the Lord says:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!
Yes. Yes! Take the outstretched hand of Jesus and come. Come back under His sheltering wing. He loves you. He is not going to show the cruelty of disinterest, of not caring, of just letting you go. Rather, He is pursuing you with His unrelenting and sometimes-painful love. Please come back to Him. Please come now.
[1] https://www.stage-door.com/Theatre/2017/Entries/2017/1/8_The_Libertine.html
[2] Hadjiev, Tchavdar S. Joel and Amos. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries. Vol. 25 (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020), p.126.
[3] Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible. Vol. 2 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019), p.1263n2.
[4] Ironside, H. A. Notes on the Minor Prophets. (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, Inc., 1963), p.157.
[5] Ironside, H. A., p.157.
[6] http://www.houndofheaven.com/poem